In addition, there are minors cared for by CAFEMIN who have been getting help with their schoolwork for two years. Working with lawyers, the ministry reunites the minors with the parents or relatives who live on the other side of the border.
Mexico is a country with a long history of migration, both of its citizens who go to the United States and of all the others who use its territory as a passageway to achieve the “American dream.”
According to the United States Customs and Border Protection, from July 2022 to March 2023 more than a million undocumented migrants have been detained at the southern border. Of these, 67,596 were unaccompanied minors.
In March alone, 191,900 undocumented migrants were apprehended at the border. More than 53% of them came from Mexico and Central American countries such as Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. Three percent came from Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua.
According to the nongovernmental organization Save the Children, the majority of unaccompanied minors attempting to cross the U.S.-Mexico border “are asylum seekers left with no choice but to flee their homes.” Many of them, the organization indicated, are fleeing “unimaginable violence” as well as “crushing poverty” in countries such as El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.
Statistics from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services show that most unaccompanied minors are between 15-17 years old but some are only 6 or 7.